Re: 32 bit access and the 810 HD

[george@cs.nps.navy.mil (Robert George)]

>   I have tried to enable the 32 bit access under windows but I get an error
> when I try to load windows. I have an 810MB HD that is partitioned into a
> 400 and a 372 MB volumes.  I seem to recall something about sector size
> being a problem, could someone tell me what I need to do to get this to work.

Gary,

     I went through this headache back in August.  The Western Digital
drivers which provide the 32-bit disk access were written before enhanced
IDE, but you need EIDE to support hard drives with capacities greater that
~520MB. 

     The only way I was able to get 32-bit disk access to work with EIDE
dives on the ThinkPad was to get the *old* "FASTDISK" drivers from Western
Digital. The new FASTDISK drivers _only_ support Western Digital drives like
the Caviar. The old FASTDISK drivers are available at cica, and replace the
wdctrl.386 driver in Windows which supplies the 32-bit disk access.

BTW, 32-bit disk access turns out not to be a big performance advantage.
Here's an excerpt from a conversation with Western Digital tech support:

"RJ Smith, Western Digital" <smith_r@a1.wdc.com> writes:

 >> [...] So my question is do I get any advantages from the Fastdisk
divers?r
 >
 >The WD FastDisk WDCDRV.386 was designed to circumvent the WDCTRL
 >limitation of 1,023 cylinders. WDCDRV.386, like WDCTRL, provides
 >only a modest increase in performance over the BIOS Int 13h code:
 >about 6%.
 >
 >Using WDCDRV.386 on any drive with less than 1,023 cylinders is
 >not necessary.

Robert

-- 

| Robert George            |  Army Research Laboratory              |
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